Monthly Archive for April, 2007

If you have entered a password in your browser, logged in to Skype or e-mail client, your Mac has probably asked whether you’d like to save that password to your Keychain. Next time there is no need to re-enter the user name and password. However, the downside is that it is very easy to forget the passwords.

So, for Mac users the Keychain stores all the passwords. To access it, open Keychain Access (Applications -> Utilities -> Keychain Access) and find the missing item. Double-click on it, press “Show password” and enter your Admin password (the same as login password).

Visit Keychain Access for your passwords.

Firefox uses it’s own Password Manager (as it was built to run on all platforms), so the info is not stored in Keychain. Some OS X users (including me) find themselves switching between the two browsers, and it is infuriating to have some of the passwords stored in Firefox, and others in Safari (Keychain). Firefox 3 is supposed to have Keychain integration meaning that whichever browser you are yousing, the passwords will be synchronized.

LightWindow – the ultimate light-‘whatever’ – is released, supporting various media types such as PDF, movies, Flash and more. Lightbox JS was, and still is, a great tool for viewing images, but now it’s possible to overlay flash movies and feedback forms onto existing content without adding unnecessary navigation items. Great way to enhance usability!

Dashboard is home to widgets and all Tiger (Mac OS X 10.4) users should be using them. I’m revealing my Dashboard as occasionally I get asked about it. From the pre-installed ones worth mentioning are Calculator, Weather (possible to have multiple locations), Unit Converter and Dictionary (great, located on hard drive so no need to be online).

My Current Installation

More widgets can be found from Apple’s site. My personal third-party favorites include:

EMI removed DRM from music (and music videos) sold on the iTunes Store. Available worldwide in May. I wrote about Apple and DRM in an earlier post and it’s really interesting to see what the impact of this release on the overall market and discussion on digital rights management. Next stage in the digital music revolution is here. From Apple’s press release:

“DRM-free tracks from EMI will be offered at higher quality 256 kbps AAC encoding, resulting in audio quality indistinguishable from the original recording, for just $1.29 per song. In addition, iTunes customers will be able to easily upgrade their entire library of all previously purchased EMI content to the higher quality DRM-free versions for just 30 cents a song.”